Dame Mary Archer interview: 'To me everything has to work round family, and fortunately it has'

Academic posts at Oxford and Cambridge, a stint as head of an NHS trust, and now chair of the science museum: whatever Jeffrey's travails, Dame Mary Archer knows she's been lucky. Here she talks about women in science, museum cuts - and the husband-shaped elephant in the room

Dame Mary Archer has brought a book along to our interview. The Meaning of Success: Insights from Women at Cambridge was published last year by the university where she used to teach. "Its thesis, that success for a woman is perhaps more broadly based than for a man, is absolutely true," she says briskly. In other words, when it comes to life-work balance, she thinks women are more bothered than men about life.

It is early on Monday morning, and we are drinking tea at the Science Museum in London. In January, Archer became chair of its board of trustees, an appointment made by the prime minister. This is the first interview she has given to a national newspaper since then. She is a formidable presence, immaculately presented in a green suit and jewellery to match her striking eyes on the day we meet, and so encased in her new persona of culture-sector grandee that I can't help but feel impertinent as I weigh up the questions I plan to ask about her starring role in one of the most famous political scandals of the last century.